Chapter 15

Waterloo

In This Chapter

Looking for peace but preparing for battle

Assembling a less than stellar team

Nearly winning

Abdicating for the second, and final, time

W aterloo is a small town a few miles south of Brussels, Belgium. It’s an unassuming place, with a church, a few inns, and some homes surrounded by old stone farmhouses and lots of open fields. Those farms and fields are its claim to fame, because one of the most famous battles in history was fought on them.

The Battle of Waterloo, as it has come to be known, is always included on lists of battles that changed the course of history. Napoleon was considered one of the greatest generals ever, yet he is often defined by this one terrific loss at the end of his career. The word has entered our language: You probably know what it means when we say someone has met their Waterloo, even if you don’t know anything about the actual battle. In this chapter, I tell you about the battle itself and why it spelled the final end of Napoleon’s political and military aspirations.

Feeling the Weight of Waterloo

For Napoleon, Waterloo was the final struggle against the forces that battled him since the very beginning of his career. For almost 20 years, he had fought various coalitions of British, Austrian, Russian, and Prussian armies, and the usual suspects were at it again. Only this time, it was to be for all the marbles — not just to determine whether Napoleon would stay in power. The outcome of the battle would go a long way in determining whether the move toward political liberalization started by the French Revolution (see Chapter 3) and continued by Napoleon would continue or be greatly slowed.

If Napoleon (see Figure 15-1) had won, perhaps the European Union would have happened a great deal sooner. Or perhaps not. That’s the frustrating but fun aspect of history: You can never be sure what would have happened if one thing (like a battle) had turned out differently.

In preparing for the battle, Napoleon appeared to make all the right moves, both on the diplomatic and military fronts. He started strong. But in the end he had too little, too late.

Figure 15-1: This period painting on a snuffbox shows Napoleon as he may have looked as he prepared to meet his Waterloo.

Organizing an Army and Seeking Peace

After Napoleon entered Paris and reclaimed power without firing a shot (see Chapter 14), events unfolded quickly. The Coalition that was allied against him was going to act fast to get rid of him once and for all. The Russian and Austrian armies were mobilizing in the east while the British and Prussian armies were very near the French border, in Belgium. To allow all four armies to act in concert against the French would be a disaster. But if he could pick them off one by one, perhaps he could succeed.

The Austrians and Russians were fairly far away, so for the moment, Napoleon could ignore them. The British and Prussians were another matter. The British, under the Duke of Wellington, were hanging out in Brussels, with the officers attending parties and the men sitting around grumbling. The Prussians were some miles away, also biding their time but (being Prussians) without the parties.

Napoleon really didn’t want war. He was old and fat and would have been content to just rule France (okay, and maybe Belgium), bringing reforms and enjoying life with his young wife, Marie Louise, and their son, both of whom he adored. But even his father-in-law, Emperor Francis I of Austria, was against him, preventing his wife and son from joining him in Paris. So war it would be.

Napoleon took several critical steps to try to prepare for (or in some cases, avoid) fighting the Coalition forces:

He sent an envoy to the Austrians asking for peace, which was ignored.

He wrote a personal letter to the Prince Regent of England asking for peace. It was returned, unopened.

He increased the army from 200,000 to 300,000 just by inspiring many of his old veterans to reenlist.

He called up the National Guard to defend the homeland.

He fortified Paris with troops and artillery.

He asked his father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria, to send his wife and son back to him, with the possibility that they would rule France if he had to abdicate again. In this request, he was also ignored.

He secured the support of the legislative body by agreeing to a new, more liberal constitution written by some of his old liberal foes.

All this was not enough. Armies and countries need leaders, so he had to recruit the best and brightest and do so quickly. Naturally, he first turned to those who had been with him before his abdication.

Picking a New Team

The most important post Napoleon had to fill was that of chief of staff. Louis Alexandre Berthier was top-notch at the job and had been for many years. He had stayed in France and been loyal to the Bourbons after Napoleon’s first abdication, but that was then and this was now.

Losing Berthier

Many people believed that Berthier would rally to Napoleon’s cause, which was no small matter. You think your doctor’s prescriptions are hard to read? You should try Napoleon’s orders! Sacré bleu! Berthier, however, was a master at understanding Napoleon and passing (greatly clarified) orders along to subordinate officers. So imagine the shock to Napoleon when news came that on June 1, 1815, Berthier had a fatal fall from a window in his estate. (Did he fall, or did he receive a not-so-friendly shove? I’ve been in that room, and frankly it is hard to imagine how someone would fall without some assistance.)

Napoleon lost more than an old friend. Some historians believe that Berthier’s death effectively ended any real chance of success for Napoleon. Berthier’s fall from his window may have led to Napoleon’s fall from power.

Settling on a B team

With Berthier gone, Napoleon made a series of personnel decisions that put pretty good people in pretty inappropriate positions:

He picked Marshal Nicolas Soult, one of his top commanders, as his chief of staff. Soult was out of his league in this job, and it showed.

Napoleon compounded the problem by leaving his best warrior in Paris: He appointed Marshal Louis Davout as Minister of War. Sure, he needed someone good at that job, but his best warrior? Davout should have been with him on the front lines, not minding the home front. (That would be like Agamemnon telling Achilles to stay home and mind the store rather than go to Troy.)

Napoleon made Marshal Michel Ney commander of his left wing. Ney was fearless and had earned the title the Bravest of the Brave in the Russian campaign (see Chapter 13). He was a great cavalry commander and a good political appointment. But he had little experience commanding at this level and insufficient imagination for the job.

Equally inappropriate was the appointment of Marshal Emanuel Grouchy to command the right wing. An excellent cavalry commander of smaller units, Grouchy was sorely lacking in the kind of initiative that he would ultimately need as commander of an entire wing.

Finally, there was the dog that didn’t bark, or at least the cavalry leader who didn’t lead. That would be perhaps the greatest cavalry commander of his day, Marshal Joachim Murat, who was also Napoleon’s brother-in-law. Okay, so he had turned on Napoleon in an earlier campaign, and he had made a fool of himself in Naples by trying to support Napoleon by attacking the Austrians, which only convinced them not to trust Napoleon. Sometimes you just have to overlook those kinds of little details. Napoleon needed the best he could get, but he turned down Murat’s pleas to serve in the 1815 campaign. Remember that fact when you read of the futile cavalry charges led by Ney at Waterloo.

There is a lot of irony in all this. Throughout his career, Napoleon was renowned for picking the best person for the best job. (Well, perhaps not every time — he did initially trust the traitor Talleyrand.) But he generally had the best staff on the field, and that fact served him well. Now, when he needed that advantage more than ever before, it wasn’t there. Napoleon may have been sick or perhaps just over-stressed. Whatever the case, the battle may have been over before it began.

Yet, in spite of the obstacles, Napoleon nearly won it all.

Marching to War

Diplomatic efforts concluded, his staff selected, and the army mobilized, Napoleon moved north into Belgium. There, he would meet his fate in a battle that has captured the imagination of historians and the general public ever since. The outcome was close. In the words of the British commander, the Duke of Wellington, the battle was “a near run thing.”

Hoping to divide and conquer again

As I note in earlier chapters, Napoleon was the master of using a divide and conquer approach. Before he went to battle this time around, he tried using this approach through diplomacy, writing to various people in an effort to get one or more of them on his side: his father-in-law, the Emperor Francis I of Austria; his old friend Tsar Alexander I of Russia; the Prince Regent of Great Britain; and even his wife, Marie Louise (who was kept under pretty tight wraps in Vienna). But when they all failed to respond, he turned to military action.

With the British and Prussian forces just north of the French border, they were the obvious targets. Very quickly, and with a great deal of secrecy, Napoleon moved his army of about 125,000 men north, hoping to divide and conquer the two opposing forces. If this worked, he might send the Prussians hightailing it to Berlin and the British swimming to England. It was Napoleon’s only real chance to win, and he almost pulled it off.

Surprising the Prussians

The Prussians were the first to discover Napoleon’s plan of action, and they were none the better off for it. He surprised them at the little town of Charleroi and sent them packing in the direction of Ligny. Wellington, the British commander, was at a formal ball in Brussels when he heard the news. (If you watch the movie Waterloo with Rod Steiger and Christopher Plummer, you’ll get a pretty good idea of what that scene must have been like. Indeed, that movie gives a good overall flavor of the campaign, though you shouldn’t depend on it for exact historical accuracy.)

Napoleon, meanwhile, was chasing the Prussians to Ligny while leaving a force under Marshal Ney at Quatre Bras, six miles northwest of Ligny. Napoleon wanted Ney to keep Wellington at bay and, if at all possible, defeat him. For his plan to work, he would need speed, secrecy, and perfect execution. He got the first two but came up short on the all-important matter of execution.

In the past, Napoleon would divide his enemy and concentrate his forces first on one wing of the split enemy and then, having defeated it, on the other wing. By splitting his forces between Quatre Bras and Ligny, he violated his own rule, and he would live to regret it. He would also live to regret his choice of Ney to head the forces at Quatre Bras, as Ney dawdled throughout the day and eventually allowed Wellington to escape unhindered.

Napoleon, joined by the wing of his army under Grouchy’s command, moved to take on the Prussians under Marshal Gebhardt Lebrecht von Blücher. After a slow start, the battle began to go well for the French, with Blücher forced to give ground. Napoleon sought to call up reinforcements to attack the Prussian right flank from the rear and crush their army. This action led to one of the biggest disasters of the campaign.

Marching to and fro

General Jean-Baptiste d’Erlon commanded a French corps that was positioned close to Napoleon’s left flank. Napoleon sent orders to d’Erlon to move right, directly across toward Ligny, and fall on the Prussian rear. Unfortunately, Napoleon’s orders were not completely clear, and d’Erlon ended up at Napoleon’s rear instead! If Berthier were still Napoleon’s chief of staff, he would never have let that happen.

The mistake was corrected, and things were moving forward. Victory was in sight! Then, one of the most amazing events in this campaign took place. Ney, finally thinking of doing something useful at Quatre Bras, sent an order to d’Erlon to come to his support. Apparently nobody bothered to tell Ney of the emperor’s orders.

Imagine d’Erlon’s surprise and confusion. He was caught in the middle: His immediate superior ordered him one way and his emperor another. For my money, the emperor would prevail, but d’Erlon was possibly confused by Napoleon’s order, possibly intimidated by Ney, and possibly just not very bright. Whatever the reason, he decided to move back toward Quatre Bras. As a result, he and his men spent the day marching back and forth and were never able to play a significant role in either action.

The lesson to be learned here is profound: No matter how great a leader may be, lousy staff work can lead to disaster.

Missing key opportunities

Another real “if only” occurred when the Prussian leader Blücher was actually thrown from his horse. French cavalry rode right by him without realizing it, and he got away. Many historians are convinced that if he had been captured, the Prussians would have most likely retreated toward Berlin rather than rally to Wellington’s cause at Waterloo.

In another error of major proportion, Napoleon was slow to send pursuit after the Prussians. When he finally did, he sent Marshal Grouchy, whose approach was, shall we say, less than urgent. He was in command of about a third of Napoleon’s army but was slow getting started and slow in his movements. When push came to shove at Waterloo, Napoleon needed those men, but he got the Prussians instead.

Waiting on the weather

Meanwhile, back at Quatre Bras, Ney was still not doing very much, and Wellington had assembled a formidable fighting force. When Wellington heard of Blücher’s defeat and withdrawal, he retreated north toward Brussels. Ney could have inflicted great damage on the retreating British. Soldiers who are retreating are very vulnerable to a pursuing army, which can pound them with mobile artillery and “slice and dice” them with cavalry. It was a golden opportunity.

Instead, Ney waited for Napoleon, letting the British escape relatively unmolested. Later, Napoleon and Ney marched north in a heavy rain. On the evening of May 17, 1815, they arrived at the fields near the small town of Waterloo. Wellington had gotten there first, of course, and had already staked out the high ground. In spite of everything, Napoleon would have a chance to inflict a second defeat on his enemies, which just might be enough to keep him in power.

On the morning of June 18, Napoleon was facing Wellington’s forces, who had grabbed the best defensive positions at Mont St. Jean. Normally, battles start early in the day, but the heavy rains had made the fields a quagmire. Sure, the British would have been disadvantaged by the rain as well, but they were already in position and playing defense. It was the French who had to move heavy cannon into position and run across muddy fields into withering fire. Maybe they should have done just that, but instead they delayed, waiting for the ground to dry just a bit. Unknown to them, the Prussians had eluded Grouchy and were moving ever closer to Waterloo.

Moving from fight to flight

By mid-morning, the fight was underway. Napoleon sent forces to try to take a nearby walled farm called Hougoumont, but the farm would never fall to the French, who hadn’t bothered to take any cannon along with them. It would have been difficult to move cannon through the heavy woods around the farm, but even a couple of light cannon would have made all the difference.

Napoleon sent his freshest troops against Wellington. That would be d’Erlon’s troops, who had done a fair amount of marching but precious little fighting. The British beat them back and then sent in the Scots Greys cavalry, one of the best such units around. They overextended, and when Napoleon sent in the cuirassiers (heavy cavalry wearing breastplates) and lancers (light cavalry carrying lances), the Scots Greys were toast. (If it sounds a bit like the Charge of the Light Brigade, you’ve got it!)

Missing Grouchy

By the afternoon, it was clear that the Prussians were going to be a factor after all. Napoleon expected to see French troops (Grouchy’s) appearing on his right flank; instead he saw Prussians. As the day wore on, it became clear that for all intents and purposes, Grouchy and one-third of Napoleon’s army had disappeared into thin air. Somewhere along the line Napoleon must surely have cried out, “Where’s Grouchy?”

Misusing the cavalry

The dubious award for Biggest Bonehead of the Battle must, however, fall to Marshal Michel Ney. He led a force of as many as 9,000 cavalry in a series of glorious but futile charges against Wellington’s forces.

It was the stuff of movies: Ney, hatless and sword in hand, exhorting his troops onward to glory. Impressive, but doomed to failure because Ney neglected to include infantry in his attack. To defend against massed cavalry, infantry forms into squares, presenting themselves as prickly boxes that are very difficult for a horse to break through. Ah, but if the cavalry fades away to reveal infantry preparing to fire, well, the squares are sitting ducks. But there would be no infantry, no sitting ducks, and no glory for Ney.

Ney could have accomplished something even without the needed infantry. In front of the British infantry was a line of artillery. Each gun was a cannon that was fired by a fuse at its closed end. As the cavalry swept by, the cannoneers retreated into the squares for safety, leaving the guns in the control of the French.

Cavalrymen are not likely to be carrying around long ramrods, but they do carry small bags of lead spikes and a hammer. Had a few of them dismounted and driven those spikes into the fuse holes, the cannon would have been disabled for the duration of the battle. Instead, after each cavalry charge, the British went right back to the cannon and blasted their attackers. Without the cannon, the battle would have been much shorter and had a much happier ending for the French! (Then at the ensuing party, the cannon spikers could have enjoyed spiked punch in honor of their efforts. Or not, as it turned out.)

Making a last-ditch effort

In spite of all this, Napoleon had one last shot at victory. Night was approaching, and he made one last effort to dislodge the British, whose lines were getting fairly thin. He had taken a walled farm known as La Haye Sainte, and therefore he had a good launching position and artillery support for his soldiers.

Ney finally got it right and began to push back portions of the British line with a combined cavalry, infantry, and artillery assault. In time, finally sensing victory, Napoleon threw five battalions of his feared Imperial Guard against Wellington, and for a time it looked like they would succeed. But the appearance of fresh Prussian troops demoralized the French; they wavered and then began to fall back in increasing disorder.

Napoleon seemed determined to stay and fight, perhaps wanting to meet his fate right there. Instead, he was given protection by a square of the Guard and eventually escaped on horseback to Paris. There, he was soon joined by the relatively rested forces of Marshal Grouchy.

Bad News Travels Fastest

Napoleon had lost the Battle of Waterloo but, back in Paris, still expected to remain in power and carry the fight further. After all, he was emperor, and there were plenty of other military forces at his disposal.

Alas, it was not to be. Napoleon as a winner was all powerful; as a loser, it was best that he get out of town quickly. He tried to abdicate in favor of his son, but that idea went nowhere. Napoleon’s enemies were determined to bring back King Louis XVIII, and that is exactly what happened. In the end, Napoleon abdicated his throne with no assurances regarding his future.

Napoleon lingered at his home at Malmaison, receiving a visit from his Polish mistress, Marie Walewska, and their son. It was their last visit. The United States had always been a possible destination for a dethroned Napoleon, but he had to act quickly. He went to the coast and considered his options, but he took too long, allowing the British to establish a blockade. There was still the possibility of making a run for it, perhaps hidden in a barrel on a French ship, but that seemed beneath the dignity of the Emperor of the French. In the end, Napoleon decided to surrender to the British, fully expecting to be allowed to retire as a country gentleman in England. Instead, he was taken to the remote island of St. Helena.

Whatever happened to . . .?

Some of the folks who rallied to Napoleon’s cause during the One Hundred Days were killed in battle. Others’ lives went back to pretty much normal after Napoleon abdicated the second and final time. Two of his most famous allies, however, met rather different fates:

Marshal Joachim Murat decided he would retake his Kingdom of Naples the way Napoleon reclaimed his own throne, so shortly after Waterloo he landed in Italy. Unfortunately for him, the local folks didn’t agree with his plan. Shortly after landing in Italy, Murat was captured, tried and quickly executed.

Marshal Michel Ney was tried for treason and found guilty. Because he was a true French military hero, many people felt he should be spared. Instead, he was executed by firing squad on December 7, 1815. (To this day, some people believe that he escaped and came to the United States to teach school. It is an amusing idea, but not very likely.)